The highest measured DC of an orginal PAF? How high could it go?

Had a hot build on my bench tonight. Looks like I've achieved the impossible, once again. Yaaaawn...

Two of those coils would result in a10.92k humbucker and and you can see from the following photo, there's even more room for wire. The bobbin isn't completely full yet. Also, note that I run a full turn of 7 strand AWG 20 black hookup wire wrapped around the bobbin, inside the coil, just like Gibson did (and another turn around the outside of the coil). This inside wire, along with its solder connection and tape insulation, takes up quite a bit of coil room. If I skipped that, like most modern builders including Gibson do, there would be even more room. No tension, aside from a Whisker Disk of the weakest available size and a little drag through the feeder, was used and the machine was set to a slow speed of rotation with a PAF-correct TPL.

Had a hot build on my bench tonight. Looks like I've achieved the impossible, once again. Yaaaawn...

Two of those coils would result in a10.92k humbucker and and you can see from the following photo, there's even more room for wire. The bobbin isn't completely full yet. Also, note that I run a full turn of 7 strand AWG 20 black hookup wire wrapped around the bobbin, inside the coil, just like Gibson did (and another turn around the outside of the coil). This inside wire, along with its solder connection and tape insulation, takes up quite a bit of coil room. If I skipped that, like most modern builders including Gibson do, there would be even more room. No tension, aside from a Whisker Disk of the weakest available size and a little drag through the feeder, was used and the machine was set to a slow speed of rotation with a PAF-correct TPL.

Perhaps those who speculate should not doubt those who accomplish?

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Legitimate observation; in that first picture it looks like the coil is eclipsing the bobbin along the length, even if there is space at the ends, as seen in the second pic. I'd suppose that makes it tricky to secure the coil with cloth tape.

This is a great experiment you're doing, I appreciate that you're adding to the collective knowledgebase about how much 42 AWG can be reasonably crammed onto a coil. It's not at odds with my own observations, it might be with these various people who claimed to hit a limit closer to 9k http://www.mylespaul.com/threads/th...paf-how-high-could-it-go.402493/#post-8480310 Maybe you're a more gifted winder then they are, hard to say.

The "bulge" you are seeing is the black hookup wire wrapped under tape around the outside of the coil, which is why I posted the last photo, with the tape peeled back, so everyone could see there is still plenty of room. Theres room for a good 500-1000 more turns, if desired.

...and I'm not a more gifted winder than others. Experienced and diligent, perhaps. Not gifted, though. You just got your information from others on the internet and didn't do your own proper experiments to quantify and qualify it before repeating your summary of it as fact. ...but I've covered that reoccurring flaw in your delivery method repeatedly, at this point.

The word "particular" means "an individual thing among many" ... and you try to joke that I have a problem with reading comprehension. That's classic you... so if there is any particular claim that I have made that anyone is in doubt of, I will be happy to back it up.

You know what the ultimate form of speculation is? Those who reach conclusion purely based on how they believe a pickup "sounds". Those who don't rely any evidence, any fact based reasoning, or experimentation, who just conclude "it must be true because I can hear it", they're making the ultimately speculation that their hearing is objective, and that what is true for their senses must be true for everyone else's senses.

If someone has in their possession a PAF that exceeded 10k, and wanted to know if it was really wound that "hot", save for literally unwinding the coil and counting the turns, they'd instead need to look at the inductance to see if it corresponds to the high DC resistance, since as was mentioned earlier, there could have been issues with the magnet wire that caused a high reading for a relatively average number of turns. The inductance tracks closely to the wind count, even if there are impurities or problems with the wire that increase the series resistance by a slight amount, in the same respect that 43 AWG has a higher resistance, but still works all the same.

cooljuk's experiment apparently shows that one can be wound that high, but it's an open question as to whether the pickup in hand actually was. When the average was supposedly closer to 7.5k, which apparently "looked full", you have to wonder how someone managed to wind it 30% beyond that point at which it must have "looked full".

Those who reach conclusion purely based on how they believe a pickup "sounds". Those who don't rely any evidence, any fact based reasoning, or experimentation, who just conclude "it must be true because I can hear it"

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Oh man... first you deny the faulty process you base your arguments on because you don't actually wind pickups.

Now, your new argument is a musician's hearing is useless? Of course, this again comes from sheer ignorance because either you don't play or you never had any formal musical education.

You know what selected hearing perception is, isn't it? Is the ability of an orchestra conductor to spot who was the one that made a mistake in a certain passage among several others. Or the ability of recognize complex chords and fast-occurring melody lines in a jazz piece. This has been recorded since the formation of the first symphonic orchestra. You maybe didn't know that I have a diplom in classical guitar specialized in execution, from my country's official conservatory and traveled quite a few thousands miles giving concerts as part as a "guitar orchestra", playing mostly southamerican and spanish repertoire.

This ability is just one of the many that classical musicians develop while they study music. With your statement you're denying the existence of this very fact. And you do because, as with everything else you do, everything you don't know just doesn't exist. You're like an autistic child that thinks that everytime time he puts his hands before his eyes, the person in front of him disappairs.

Well... at least the graphs you produce make you look good, even though you're not in any way capable to correctly interpret the data. They still look good, though.

I didn't say hearing perception is "useless", I said it amounts to speculation.

either you don't play or you never had any formal musical education.

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That's a steaming pile of speculation right there. One thing that is crystal clear, though, is that you're much more interested in discussing me than you are discussing the topic at hand. It doesn't seem that you care even the slightest about how much 42 AWG can fit on two PAF bobbins. This is why a person can't come to a forum like this with any great expectations, there are moderators, but no moderation to speak of.

, was used and the machine was set to a slow speed of rotation with a PAF-correct TPL.

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I missed this detail the first time I read your post, and I suspect that this might be the difference right here. Working theory: a ~9k limit corresponds to higher speeds necessary to produce humbuckers cost effectively, but that with added time/cost you can get it above 10k. I'd be interested to see what you get "at speed", although I'm sure "at speed" RPMs varies from winder to winder, and how much time they're willing to devote to winding coils.

My version of "slow speed" is about 1500 RPMs, which is about the speed of most of the machines Gibson has used / uses. I can double that if I like on this given machine but the shape of the coil changes.

The reason I stated it was at slow speed was to avoid any potential questions to if I had stretched the wire.

It doesn't seem that you care even the slightest about how much 42 AWG can fit on two PAF bobbins

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That's something I KNOW. I do re-winds for time to time, remember? Plus, my demographic will never ask for "as much wire as you can get" inside a bobbin. They ask for certain recipes that don't call for a lot of wire. Just the right amount, to complement the inherent tone-footprint of their guitars, mostly semi- and full hollow instruments.

I get this resistance question so many times that I wrote pages on www.pafhumbucker.com devoted to how the winders Gibson used affect the amount of wire that can go on a P.A.F. bobbin.

In short 10k is unusual for a P.A.F. but can be done with no tricks. For a vintage P.A.F. it is a question of 42AWG tolerance in ohms per foot and outside diameter being in the right window. Vintage 10k pickups are out there. As an example Eric Johnson's guitar tech told me he swapped out a bunch of vintage P.A.F. for Eric, one of which was over 10k and it sounded like crap.

You also cannot underestimate how much of an impact the winding machines Gibson used affected the size of the coils. The photos below illustrate this. They are of P-90 bobbins which show the difference more starkly than a P.A.F. bobbin. When you actually see this happen with the machines Gibson owned, the wind until the bobbin is full spec. that Seth Lover talked about makes sense and explains full coils that fall in the 7.8k range while other full coils can reach 10k.

Details:

1.Turn per layer is the same for both coils, which is the ideal TPL for a .25" traverse with 42 AWG wire.

2.Both coils have 8900 turns.

3. Both coils use 42 awg PE wire although the fatter coil's wire actually mics .00005" smaller than the smaller coil's wire. So the size difference is actually less than if the wire was the same for both!

4. Wire tension is actually 15 grams lower on the small coil than the large coil!

Both of these coils were wound on machines Gibson used. The smaller coil was wound on the Leesona 102 and I am quite sure that the 10k P.A.F.'s were wound on the Leesona 102 because of it's ability to easily make a more compact coil.

BTW I posted this same information on the Strat Talk forum in 2016 in response to bogus info posted there by Antigua.